I cannot even begin to describe how insane the past month has been, but it was well worth it. Two weeks ago, the Art & Technology seniors and I had our show, which was entitled ‘Wi-Five’ (Wi-Fi + High Five). As part of publicity, I was in charge of branding the show and creating the advertising poster. Despite being Easter weekend, we had a pretty good turn out and a lot of positive feedback on the show in general. I had two pieces featured in the show, Wrapping and my perfected crest headdress, which I ended up titling Ruffle My Feathers, because who doesn’t like cheesy titles?

After all the chaos of the senior show, my collaborator Joy and I spent the next two weeks cranking out our project for the Fab Lab show. Things started coming together, but not without our share of bumps in the road. We spent a while debating exactly how we would be using the Fab Lab, although our proposal stated that we would be using the 3D printer. After realizing that it would put us over budget, we began thinking of alternatives that utilized the laser cutter instead. I spent a lot of time in the lab creating several prototypes and adjusting the parts accordingly to fit our electronics.

After fixing some last-minute wiring issues and a few minor meltdowns, we finally got our piece to function like we had intended it to. Overall, the Fab Lab show was successful, and people enjoyed interacting with our piece. It wasn’t exactly “people proof,” so we spent a good deal of the night babysitting the piece and verbally instructing people on how best not to break things. Overall, the experience of participating in this show was great, however I can say we were extremely relieved once the show was over.

– N.

As typical of my life nearing the end of college, a lot has been going on since my last update. I’ve been deeply immersed in projects and am now preparing for not one, not two, but THREE gallery shows that will be appearing at Warphaus in April and May.

This past month, my professor encouraged me to submit a proposal for the Provost’s Digital Fabrication Lab Award. To explain it better, UF has a digital fabrication lab which consists of two laser cutters, a 3D scanner, and two different types of 3D printers. For this award, five winners were given up to $1,000 each to pursue a project using the lab in some way. So, my partner and I entered with our proposal, and got a grant! Needless to say, the next few weeks will be hectic, but the ball is in motion and we’re hoping to create something amazing.

The second most notable event was Ad Dash. Last week, my group and I spent 12 hours creating an advertising campaign for the mystery client, which ended up being Aha! The Innovation CoLab, which is the brand new space in UF’s Journalism and Communications building. After an awesome presentation, we ended up making it to the final round. Sadly, our group ended up losing by one vote, so our branding wont be used, but I’m still extremely proud of what we’ve created. I’ve added a new entry under ‘Graphic Design’ that showcases the project, which can be seen here.

Other than that, I’ve just been working on the typical class stuff. Well, maybe not so typical. For my Advanced Experiments class, we did a project on wearable technology. I ended up making this crazy motorized bird headdress that is supposed to respond to the wearer’s heart rate. After spending the weekend fiddling with electronics, I still hadn’t gotten everything working like it should be, but it will definitely be completed by the time my senior show rolls around. For now, you can view a video of the Crest Headdress in action, and I promise I will post a more improved version of this in the coming month!

– N.

So far, being a second semester senior has been crazy, and I’m loving every moment of it. A lot of good things have come my way recently, and I’d really like to share them with my readers.

First and most notably, my website is finally looking the way I want it to! I’m really excited, and I’ve put up a whole bunch of new work. DigitalGreg has been extremely helpful in photographing my work, as well as taking the lovely new photograph of me on my “about” page. I’m still working on some gallery fixes and video encoding issues with vimeo, but once those are resolved, I will be posting a section containing my body of work that I’ve been developing in the Art & Technology program here at UF. In addition, I’m also working on re-theming my resume and business cards to match the look of this site.

I am currently working on a few freelance design projects that I’m very excited to share (once they’ve come to completion, of course). I am also very excited to announce that I have been selected to participate in Ad Society’s very first Ad Dash. Ad Dash is a philanthropic event that connects UF students with a secret client that is in need of marketing assistance. Teams of up to 5 people, all with different specialties, have 12 hours to develop a campaign for the client. The winning team will have their work used by that client and will also score an interview with a major ad agency in New York. I’ve never done anything like this before, but I’m beyond excited to be chosen to be a part of this!

On the subject of exciting news, DAMN (Digital Arts Media Network), UF’s Art & Technology club, participated in its very first studio visiting trip yesterday. Eight of us carpooled down to Orlando to visit EA Tiburon and FIEA. First of all, EA’s facility was AWESOME. This particular studio was responsible for the EA Sports productions, including Madden, NCAA Football, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour, so the place was covered from head to toe in sports memorabilia (including a lot of Gator swag!). There was also a ball pit in their conference room, not to mention a free coffee and cereal bar on every floor. We had a brief tour of the building from a former Gator and got a general feel for the production pipeline. Although I don’t plan on going into the gaming industry, I have to admit that I was extremely impressed by what I saw.

Our next stop was FIEA, UCF’s graduate program for video game production. Their facility was also extremely beautiful and they had a lot of cutting-edge technology. FIEA has a partnership with the House of Moves in California responsible for motion capture technology used in movies and video games. As a result, FIEA has the largest motion capture studio on the east coast that is accessible to FIEA students and brings in a lot of outside business.

The day that we were there just happened to be the day that the students were giving their ‘Vertical Slice’ presentations. Students are formed into teams consisting of programmers, artists, animators, etc. and they spend their last two semesters or so developing a video game from ideation to completion. The presentations they gave were basically a check-in point after two months of work on them. We stayed for three of the presentations, but from what we saw, we were really impressed. They each demoed a portion of their game that was full developed. Of course a lot of tweaking was still needed, but the graphics and the feel of each game were really well fleshed out.

Much, much more exciting news to come 🙂

-N.